About Me

I'm a semi-retired professional man, living in the Midwestern United States. This blog is a personal blog and is not directly connected with my professional practice (although I may draw upon my professional experiences, as well as my personal experiences, in writing my blog posts). This is a place for personal, not professional, opinions.

The Blogroll

07/14/2018

A Slow Upward Spiral

Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see ...each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition-- all such distortions within our own egos-- condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. That's how it is in all living relationships except when there is that rare case of two people who love intensely enough to burn through all those layers of opacity and see each other's naked hearts.― Tennessee Williams

As painful a process as preparation for the Catholic sacrament of "reconciliation" can (and should) be, it continues to amaze me how often during that process, my confessor, often a relatively young man, burns through the haze of my dysfunctional thought processes and hits me with a ray of wisdom. I had that happen to me again this morning.

He must have sensed a tone of exasperation in my voice while I confessed my oft-repeated sins (although this was my first time before this young priest, who is brand new to the local parish), because he said that although it may seem like these "common" sins (anger, lust, and judgmentalism among them) are part of a process that seems circular (confession; repentance; attempts to "sin no more;" failure; rinse and repeat), it's not a never-ending perpetually horizontal circle in which you're imprisoned, but an upward spiral, no matter how slow or imperceptible the upward progress might seem to those caught in the whirl. God knows we're trying, He knows we're all sinners, He knows we fail, and He loves us anyway. The fact that you're aware of your failure means that you are likely slowly on your way. If you keep coming back to God, He will not abandon you, for His mercy is infinite. He is working on you, and only requires that you continue to seek Him, no matter how many times you fall on your face along the route. The folks that ought to worry, but often do not, are those who think they're doing just fine.

There's a further lesson in that view, one that occurred to me later, on my way home. God expects us to extend that same mercy to others who, we think, have acted "wrongly" toward us. If you want it from God, offer it up yourself. "Hate the sin, not the sinner."

As icing on the cake for my Saturday morning dessert, shortly after arriving home, I stumbled across Williams's quote. Although a late-in-life Catholic convert, Williams had a complicated relationship with religion and with his idea of "God"; however, in addition to being one of the outstanding American playwrights of the 20th Century, he certainly was a keen student of the human condition. As St. Paul famously observed, in the here and now, we all "see through a glass, darkly." We think we've got "the other" figured out, packed in a box, tied up with a pretty ribbon, and shoved on a shelf. In all likelihood, we haven't a clue. Mercy, therefore, ought to be the cornerstone of our existence. It hasn't been the cornerstone of mine. How about you, “Tennessee"?

Shall we both grant the other mercy, or shall we each continue to deny that we have done anything to require it from the other? I'll take the first step: Miserere mei.